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Marlboro Cigarettes

This image shows a Mobile Cigarette Dispenser for Marlboro, one of the projects carried out while working at a London Design consultancy. It shows the wide variety of materials and manufacturing processes used in a single complex product – precision aluminium castings, machined plastic, folded sheet steel and injection moulded ABS.

This version of the design is a portable dispenser in which a neck strap is attached to the snap-in features at each end of the unit, much like the ice cream vendor in cinemas – remember them?

A cigarette pack can be manually stripped from the top of the pile and sold to the customer.

There were also a Single Column Dispenser and a large Carousel Dispenser. The radical product design was not mine, I had the task of engineering the ideas for prototype and short run manufacture.

The main design idea in all of these versions is the use of a constant force spring that acted on a stack of cigarette packs, pushing them upward, so that as the top one is sold the stack is seamlessly replenished. The appearance design philosophy was that the major visual component, precision cast aluminium, promotes a sturdy, rugged appearance typified by the brand image of Marlboro cigarettes.

It was an attempt to promote the brand at a time when print and media advertising of cigarettes was being phased out by legislation.